From left, Schuyler Morse, Baxter Colbath, John Morse and Noah Welte, all of Norwalk Pack 61, watch racers pass the finish line during the Powahay District's Pinewood Derby Championship in New Canaan on April 30, 2016. less

From left, Schuyler Morse, Baxter Colbath, John Morse and Noah Welte, all of Norwalk Pack 61, watch racers pass the finish line during the Powahay District's Pinewood Derby Championship in New Canaan on April ... more

NORWALK — Pablo Aymerich said for as long as he could remember as a Scout leader, sisters of Scouts have tagged along on the district field days. At the Hoyt Scout Reservation in West Redding, they would learn how to build a fire, shoot a BB gun or ride a sled with the boys.

“We’ve never been exclusive — we strive to make our events something where siblings can participate,” he said.

However, none of those skills would result in a merit badge, since girls could not officially be Cub Scouts. “They were doing it by proxy,” Aymerich said.

An adult leader in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts for over 15 years, he said in that time he recalls two or three girls saying they wished they could participate more fully.

On Wednesday, that barrier dissolved. The board of directors of the Boy Scouts of America voted unanimously to allow girls into the century-old organization. While girls 14 and over had been allowed in Venturing, Explorers and Sea Scouts, until now they were not allowed in the Boy Scouts.

“We strive to bring what our organization does best — developing character and leadership for young people — to as many families and youth as possible as we help shape the next generation of leaders,” Michael Surbaugh, BSA chief scout executive, said in a statement.

“We’re excited to share that our Scouting family is getting bigger,” the Connecticut Yankee Council of the Boy Scouts of America, which oversees scouting programs in Fairfield and New Haven counties, said on its Facebook page. “Our mission is to prepare young people for the future by instilling the values of Scouting’s Oath and Law.”

The national organization said, beginning in 2018, girls will be allowed into its Cub Scout program, which had been limited to boys in the first through fifth grades or between the ages of 7 and 10. Aymerich explained the Cub Scouts are organized in packs, which are subdivided into dens. While packs will be co-ed, the individual dens will be all-girl or all-boy.

A separate program for older girls will be announced next year and is expected to be available in 2019. It will enable girls to advance to the coveted rank of Eagle Scout.

The latest announcement by the Boy Scouts of America was immediately met with criticism from the scouting organization for girls.

“We are the organization creating — through our skill-building Girl Scout Leadership Experience — the female leadership pipeline,” said Girl Scouts of Connecticut CEO Mary Barneby in a statement following the announcement. “Girl Scouts is, and will remain, the scouting program that truly benefits U.S. girls by providing a safe space for them to learn and lead.”

The Girl Scouts of the USA said the initiative strained the century-old bond between the two organizations. Girl Scout officials have suggested the BSA’s move was driven partly by financial problems and a need to boost revenue.

In August, the president of the Girl Scouts, Kathy Hopinkah Hannan, accused the Boy Scouts of seeking to covertly recruit girls into their programs while disparaging the Girl Scouts’ operations. On Monday, Latino civic leader Charles Garcia, just days after being named to the Girl Scouts’ national board, wrote an opinion piece for the Huffington Post calling the BSA’s overture to girls “a terrible idea.”

“The Boy Scouts’ house is on fire,” Garcia wrote. “Instead of addressing systemic issues of continuing sexual assault, financial mismanagement and deficient programming, BSA’s senior management wants to add an accelerant to the house fire by recruiting girls.”

Instead of recruiting girls, Garcia said the BSA should focus on attracting more black, Latino and Asian boys — particularly those from low-income households.

The announcement follows many months of outreach by the BSA, which distributed videos and hosted meetings to discuss the possibility of expanding girls’ participation beyond existing programs, such as Venturing, Exploring and Sea Scouts.

Surveys conducted by the Boy Scouts showed strong support for the change among parents not currently connected to the Scouts, including Hispanic and Asian families that the BSA has been trying to attract. Among families already in the scouting community, the biggest worry, according to Surbaugh, was the positive aspects of single-sex comradeship might be jeopardized.

“We’ll make sure those environments are protected,” he said. “What we’re presenting is a fairly unique hybrid model.”

During the outreach, some parents expressed concern about possible problems related to overnight camping trips. Surbaugh said there would continue to be a ban on mixed-gender overnight outings for Scouts ages 11 to 14. Cub Scout camping trips, he noted, were usually family affairs with less need for rigid polices.

The Girl Scouts, founded in 1912, and the BSA, founded in 1910, are among several major youth organizations in the U.S. experiencing sharp drops in membership in recent years. Reasons include competition from sports leagues, a perception by some families that they are old-fashioned, and busy family schedules.

As of March, the Girl Scouts reported more than 1.5 million youth members and 749,000 adult members, down from just over 2 million youth members and about 800,000 adult members in 2014. The Boy Scouts say current youth participation is about 2.35 million, down from 2.6 million in 2013 and more than 4 million in peak years of the past.

Earlier this year, the National Organization for Women urged Boy Scouts to allow girls to join. NOW said it was inspired by the efforts of a 15-year-old New York City girl, Sydney Ireland, to emulate her older brother, who is an Eagle Scout.

Unlike the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts have maintained girls-only status for all their programs. The empowerment of girls is at the core of its mission.

“We know that girls learn best in an all-girl, girl-led environment,” said Andrea Bastiani Archibald, a psychologist who provides expertise on development for the Girl Scouts’ national programming.

The Boy Scouts’ new policy on girls was hailed by Zach Wahls, an Eagle Scout who played an active role in pressuring the BSA to end its ban on gays. However, he urged the Boy Scouts to take one more step and end its exclusion of atheists and nonbelievers who do not profess a “duty to God.”

Bassam El-Abid, of Norwalk, who has two daughters in Girl Scouts and two sons in Boy Scouts, said his family was thrilled.

“We are seriously thinking about switching over,” he said. “The older girl is excited about the fact that she can compete with her brother on Eagle.”